


(what if this is) all the love you ever get

by justcourbeau



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Accident, Accidental Baby Acquisition, CPS, Dad!Shane, Gen, Grief, Kid Fic, Los Angeles, M/M, Minor Character Death, Panic Attack, Parents, What Have I Done, baby acquisition
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 13:22:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19174147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justcourbeau/pseuds/justcourbeau
Summary: Ryan lets Shane play one of his long Americana playlists the whole ride down to San Diego, where Steph had lived with Amelia, and where they have to go fetch her from.The ride back is much quieter because there’s a four month old in the backseat, sleeping like her life hasn’t just taken a drastic and unexpected swerve to the left.[or, Shane inherits a baby girl.]





	(what if this is) all the love you ever get

**Author's Note:**

> Warning. Gratuitous use of em-dashes ahead. 
> 
> Also rpf which I never thought I’d dip my toe into. No offense intended to any of the people even tangentially involved. 
> 
> I don’t think I need to say it, but I don’t know these people. Basically every background detail is made up. For example, I have no idea if Shane has a cousin named Stephanie, and I sincerely hope any aunts he does have do not/will not suffer from early onset Alzheimer's, amongst other things. They’re vehicles and plot devices used to tell a trope-packed story and have no basis in truth. 
> 
> And finally, I’m brand new to the fandom. I haven’t even really looked through the archive. Any similarities to other fics here can be explained by the old adage “tropes gonna trope”. (If you’ve read my work for any of the other fandoms I’ve written on here and on ff dot net, you know I can’t resist a good trope. It’s physically impossible.)
> 
> Let’s get into it.

_What if it hurts like hell_

_Then it’ll hurt like hell_

_-_ __What If This Is All The Love You Ever Get? by Snow Patrol_ _

 

 

Everything is coming to him through the filter of almost too many buffalo wings and definitely too many beers, loud bar talking, and end-of-the-season celebratory miscellany, which is why he doesn’t notice it’s _his_ phone ringing until one of his fellow coworkers points it out.

“Madej, it’s your _dad!_ You better answer!”

There’s a chorus of _awwwww’s_ and a distinct _‘Papa Madej!’_ from Ryan as Shane snatches his smartphone back and holds it ridiculously close to his nose in order to determine the validity of—

Yeah, it’s his dad.

Shane goes to slide out of the booth, somehow squeezing by Jen but nearly tripping over her outstretched leg, and catching himself on Ryan’s shoulder. He pulls back quickly; Ryan’s been a little distant lately, and the look on his face at the contact registers in Shane’s almost drunk brain as a little too close to uncomfortable for his liking.

“Woah, sorry little guy. Back in a minute,” he rambles, before sliding his thumb over the lit-up screen and saying as clearly as he can, “Hey dad, one sec, let me just move so I can hear you.”

It’s not very far to the front door, and once out on the street, the noise falls away. Shane takes in a large lungful of clean, non-beer-or-tequila-or-sweat smelling air, and it feels like half the pressing party ambience evaporates from his brain.

“Okay, I’m here, hi,” he starts with, pressing the phone to his ear again.

“Shane, where are you?” his dad’s voice comes through, quiet. Shane clicks the volume up as high as it will go, and presses it tighter to the side of his head.

“I’m at the season wrap party, the one for the show…?”

His parents haven’t kept tabs on him in _years,_ and it’s a weird question from his dad at 10:37pm on a Friday, especially when they live in a timezone two hours ahead of Los Angeles.

There’s silence that seems like it might stretch on forever, but Shane is also pretty sure he’s fairly deep into the tipsy to shitfaced scale, and it’s probably just a second or two before his dad’s voice is back on the line.

“I’m really sorry to have to…”

His dad’s voice cracks— _cracks_ —and Shane’s heart rate picks up in his chest, in a way that isn’t a response to slamming another shot or almost eating shit on the way out of the bar to answer a call.

“Okay, now I _know_ something is—what’s wrong? Dad, what’s—did something happen to mom?”

He regrets every tequila shot he’s even _seen_ tonight, let alone taken, as he tries to stop the gentle sway he’s adopted. His arm hair stands up. He sucks in a breath and doesn’t let it go.

“Stephanie was in a car accident. She didn’t make it.”

And he doesn’t… doesn’t _comprehend_ , because those words don’t fit together, those words don’t sound like they should be part of the same sentence in that order. They sound like the spirit box, all garbled and fragmented and skipping, skipping, skipping like his heart, his fucking _heart,_ the one that’s about to beat out of his chest if he doesn’t—

He wants to ask “Steph— _our_ Stephanie?” but he can’t get any noise out.

“Mia is staying the night with CPS, we couldn’t get them to release information to us after hours, we tried, and your uncle tried—”

He sits down before he can fall down.

The pavement is gross and grey and disgusting, and his chinos are relatively light coloured, he’s directly in the way of people walking because he didn’t— _couldn’t_ —move off to the side before dropping, and none of it matters anyway.

His heart is thumping hard and erratic, and his brain hasn’t caught up yet, not even close, and he can see cars passing, can see people talking, can see their mouths moving, but he can’t _hear_ any of it.

“Shane?”

He must have exhaled that breath and continued breathing because he hasn’t passed out yet, but another big puff of air escapes him as someone touches his shoulder and brings the world back into sharp, grating focus.

Ryan is crouched down closer to Shane’s level, hand on his shoulder, as Maycie stands closeby, both pinning him with worried looks.

“What’s wrong, buddy? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Or the ghost of too many drinks,” Ryan huffs out with a hollow laugh, still staring at him intently for any sign, probably, of why the fuck his friend is sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, catatonic, and Shane still can’t form words.

So he hands his phone over to Ryan, who double checks the name on the screen before pressing it to his own ear.

“Hi, it’s Ryan. Yeah, he’s… he doesn't look so good. Is something wrong?”

Shane doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how he used to breathe—what does normal breathing feel like to him? He can’t remember and that’s weird, right?—doesn’t know how to be a person right this minute, and so he just stares at Ryan talking on his phone to his dad, and Ryan stares right back.

Shane can tell the moment Ryan gets an answer that makes sense, the moment his dad explains that Shane’s cousin has _died,_ that Stephanie’s baby daughter is in the hands of strangers until at least the next morning, that her baby is motherless, that her baby is an _orphan_ now because her biological dad wasn’t responsible enough to care for a child, that his cousin is _dead,_ and _he’s_ her—

“I’ll make sure he’s okay. I’ll take him home right now.”

Shane can’t concentrate on anything, can’t differentiate the car noises from the people noises from the LA noises from the—but he can hear Ryan clear as day, is cataloguing every word that comes out of his mouth because he needs something solid to focus on, and Ryan is holding his gaze through it all.

“You still have my number, right?” Ryan is saying into Shane’s phone, nodding. “Maycie, can you get Shane’s stuff from inside?”

And, oh shit, Shane forgot she was even there, but a second later she’s gone anyway, and he can’t even—he doesn’t have the capacity to feel bad about that, to even register the fact that—

Shane still doesn’t know what regular breathing should feel like to him, but he knows it’s not the current panicked staccato that’s building, ballooning out of control in his chest, like somehow there’s no air left around him even though Ryan is still squatting right in front of him, is still breathing like a normal person, doesn’t look like he’s about to fall over sideways because his ribs won’t work together properly.

“Shane. Hey, Shane. _Breathe.”_ Ryan leans closer, Shane’s phone screen now dark and clutched in one hand, and he’s staring even more intently at Shane’s face, Ryan’s features more seriously arranged than Shane’s ever seen them. He must see that Shane is incapable of stopping the mangled, twisted mess the adrenaline is making of his respiratory system feedback loop, and suddenly Shane’s hand is being pressed to Ryan’s chest and held there. “Breathe with me, okay?”

There’s a moment that passes—or three or five or fucking _twelve,_ he doesn’t really know—but his breathing levels out and his face feels hot even though everything else feels cold and his butt is sore, but his palm is warm and Ryan is right there, ribs and cartilage and skin under his hand, and it’s working. Somehow, it’s working.

Shane blinks and Maycie is back, Shane’s jacket and baseball hat in hand. He blinks again and he’s in the back of what he can only assume is an Uber, and Ryan is settling into the backseat next to him, closing the door. Another blinkblinkblink and it’s city lights, the flight of stairs up to his apartment, and finally, a very skewed view of his living room.

He’s been near-blackout enough times in his life to know that he’s probably hanging half off his couch, but his body is mostly numb and his brain is definitely numb and he doesn’t really care.

Someone is busy making noise in his kitchen, and he really hopes it’s Ryan because he _really_ doesn’t have the wherewithal to banish a demon or chastise a ghost. _Right now_ would be the most inopportune time for Ryan to be proven right about his ghost theories.

_I hope it was quick._

The thought would have knocked him off his feet had he been standing.

“Yes, I got him home. I’m going to get him into bed. No, no, I’ll stay with him tonight, don’t worry—”

Tears pool in Shane’s eyes and he can’t see his crooked living room anymore.

“No, I really don’t mind. When did they say they would be able to…” Ryan’s voice trails off as he listens to whoever is on the other end of the phone. “Okay. I’ll call—or, Shane will call in the morning, and you guys can make a plan and… yeah, that sounds good. Yeah, of course. I’ll make sure he knows. No, he’s still… I don’t think he heard half of what I said to him on the way back. I’m gonna put him to bed, and I’ll fill him in in the morning. Of course. Okay, bye.”

There’s a few long moments where Shane is aware enough to know that Ryan is still standing out of sight in his kitchen but not moving again yet. He hears multiple little _swoops_ indicating texts being sent, and then the water is running in the sink.

And that’s it.

.

.

.

Everything comes back to him like a whistling, rushing Illinois winter gust, biting and frigid.

His head is pounding and his eyelids feel like they’re made of sandpaper and he feels _gross_ in a way he distinctly associates with his freshman year of college.

It takes a number of blurry blinks for Shane to register that he’s in his own bed, curled up on his side, and Ryan is mostly propped up, but slumped, against the headboard next to him.

And he didn’t take his contacts out last night.

The light filtering into his room is so faint, so early morning, that he can barely see anything anyway, so he closes his eyes again.

He just waits for a minute, two minutes, because if he doesn’t move, if he doesn’t think or speak or cry, maybe he won’t have to continue on down this path. Maybe he’ll be spared, and he can just cut the grief short here.

He could just pretend that everything is fine until it _is_ fine.

Slowly, Shane becomes aware of the bed shaking slightly, and then more insistently, and he doesn’t realize it’s him, it’s him crying that’s making the bed shake, until Ryan is rubbing his shoulder with sleepy, uncoordinated movements.

“Hey, are you—how are you feeling?”

There’s a pause during which Shane tries his best to find his voice, and it comes out with an extremely rough croak.

“At least now I can get my contacts out.”

“And you’re back,” Ryan breathes after a pause, relieved, his hand slowing. “I’m so sorry, man.”

“Yeah. Uhm. Thanks. And thanks for bringing me home. I—that was all you, right? I think I remember not all, not everything…”

“Yeah.” Ryan’s voice is subdued. “I think you were having some sort of drunken hybrid panic attack shock session. I wasn’t just gonna leave you.”

The early morning quiet settles in again, the long pause dragging, and suddenly Shane doesn’t know how to keep himself from crying again unless he gets up immediately. He rolls over, somewhat jerkily, before sliding to the floor and snatching random shirts up for the sniff test. He finds and acceptable one, and pulls off the one he wore out last night; it smells too much like sweat and skin.

“What’re you… Shane, it’s 4:47 in the morning. Where are you going?”

“To go get Mia.”

“Your mom said to wait until 8. CPS isn’t even—”

“Right.” He’s suddenly at a loss, falling still even though his mind is now whirring, making up for all the lost time it spent in limbo last night.

Shane’s not sure he has the words to explain yet, to spell it out to Ryan exactly what all of this will mean for Shane, because he’s pretty sure he hasn’t even finished processing it yet himself. But this will change _everything._

So Shane takes a deep breath and lets it go slowly, resolving that last night will be the one and only time his brain goes offline like it did.

No more, because he has some fairly important things to take care of now.

Shane rifles through his drawers, pulling out clean clothes and stripping down to his boxers without regard for Ryan’s wide, watching eyes. When he’s done, he quickly snatches up every item of clothing he’s left on his bedroom floor in the last few days, and dumps them into the laundry basket in the corner.

“You should go back to sleep, Ryan.”

 _“You_ should go back to sleep, Shane.”

Shane pauses, allowing himself to slow down enough to really stop and look at his best friend all rumpled, bags under his eyes and face tight with worry.

Ryan opens his mouth again before Shane can say anything, which is good because Shane’s still having trouble with words making sense in his head, let alone out loud.

“I’ll go back to sleep if you do.” It comes out round and soft in a way that makes Shane’s eyes prickle with _something._

“That’s not… an option right now. I’m awake. I need to feel productive. And I actually have a lot to do, so… that works out.”

Shane can see Ryan swallow, can see the bob of his adam's apple in his throat. “Okay,” he says, before pushing himself upright and swinging his legs over the side of the bed to get up. “What are we doing, then?”

“What?” Shane blinks.

“If you’re up, I’m up. If I’m up, I might as well help you with whatever you have to do. So… What are we doing?”

Shane blinks again, watching Ryan stretch his neck tenderly, as if he has a crick in it from sleeping slumped for the last five or so hours. Which is probably the truth of the situation.

“Uh…” Shane starts. His brain tries to take the very quickly lengthening mental to do list and prioritize it, but things are still jumbled and unclear, creating glitches left and right.

“Coffee first.” Ryan nods with a finality Shane didn’t think was possible for someone who he’s seen hum and haw over his Chipotle toppings long enough that the people in line behind them had threatened a coup. And then Ryan’s straightening his shirt and padding past Shane in the direction of his kitchen, like this is perfectly normal.

.

.

.

Ryan’s slept on Shane’s couch often enough over the years that him rifling through Shane’s kitchen cupboards and setting the coffee machine into action is not without hefty precedent.

It does, however, put Shane at a loss of what occupy himself with.

He _had_ said he had a lot to do. But the issue is _where to start,_ because that hadn’t been a lie. So he leaves Ryan puttering in the kitchen, and moves to the living room, surveying his apartment in the barely-there light of pre-dawn. There’s a familiar furry orange croissant curled up quietly on the back of the couch.

Oh, shit, _Obi._

“Do cats really smother babies in their sleep?” Shane asks, alarmed.

“What?” Ryan asks. His head pokes around the corner. “No. That’s not really a thing.”

_“Thank god.”_

Shane spends the next seven minutes with Obi warm in his lap, his hands running over the orange fur, soaking up the constant, steady _purr_ of him until he feels a little less like shaking apart at the joints.

When a cup of steaming coffee is wafted under his nose, Shane looks up, neck cracking. He takes the mug with a whispered thanks, still keeping one hand on Obi, warm and sleepy.

“To be clear, I think I know the answer to this, but why are you asking about cats smothering babies?” Ryan settles into the other side of the couch, his own mug cradled in his palms.

“How… how much did my parents tell you?”

“Your mom said you’re Mia’s godfather.”

It’s a shockingly short explanation, but it contains a lot in the way of implications for Shane’s life, going forward.

“I don’t take that responsibility lightly,” is what Shane offers by way of an answer.

There’s a few long moments of silence, occupied sporadically by slurps of coffee and a yawn or two.

“I thought so.”

Ryan doesn’t ask, doesn’t _say_ anything else, and Shane knows he doesn’t really need to offer an explanation here, but maybe _Shane_ needs to say it out loud, because saying it out loud requires organizing it, organizing the thoughts into something understandable. That sounds like a good first step. So—

“My parents can’t take her. I mean, I’m sure they could _make it work,_ but they’re… they’ve done their part. They're _doing_ their part. My mom and dad still live really close to Steph’s parents, my aunt and uncle. And my aunt was just diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. So… They have their hands full already. And it’s only going to get worse.” Shane pauses. “And I can’t let my mom, dad, and uncle take on a baby, and force them to try to balance everything on top of that. It’s not fair—not when I’m right here. Not when my only current responsibilities are making sure Obi has food in his dish and trying not to forget to water the houseplants for so long that they can’t be revived.”

He expects Ryan to ask “you can barely even take care of yourself, how are you going to take care of a baby?” He expects Ryan to say “there are other options, Shane. There has to be.'' He expects him to maybe think to himself “I bet you wish you and Sara were still together because that would make everything so much easier, in a way.” Instead—

“Are you sure?” is what Ryan goes with.

Shane nods. “I’m her godfather. I promised Stephanie I would do this. That’s a—that’s a promise I can’t break.”

Ironic, because his _voice_ kinda breaks as he says it.

Ryan nods like that’s exactly what he had been expecting Shane to say all along.

They’re both quiet, and eventually, pre-dawn slips into actual dawn, and sunlight is beginning to filter through the living room windows. They both make the trek back around to the kitchen, ostensibly for the purposes of refilling coffee mugs, but they both sort of linger in the kitchen after doctoring their respective brews.

Perhaps unfairly, Shane keeps expecting Ryan to pop out with alternatives, other paths Shane could take to make sure that his cousin’s baby is well looked after, ways that still don’t involve Shane taking sole custody of a small child.

Instead, Ryan says nothing.

Instead, he drains his coffee mug and pulls on the pink dish gloves Shane keeps under the kitchen sink next to the cleaners, and he spends the next hour helping Shane dust, tidy, and disinfect every surface in the apartment until it sparkles.

.

.

.

When his mom calls, Shane retreats to his room again, perching on the corner of the mattress with his elbows on his knees and his head not quite hanging from the cradle of his hands. And look—

Shane cries. Like in general, he has cried. Is crying. Will cry again in the future, surely. But the point is, Shane has emotions. They aren’t forgeign to him—he has them all the time, like he’s said to Ryan before.

But hot, swimming tears and a stuttering breathing pattern are not normal occurrences for him. But that’s what he’s dealing with now, with confirmed saint Sherry Madej on the other end of the line.

“It’s okay, baby. It’s tragic—” they both hiccup a little at that assessment, and Shane regrets throwing all the dirty laundry into the basket because now it’s not as easily accessible to mop his face with “—but everything will work out okay, even though it doesn’t seem like it right now.”

_“Stephanie—and—”_

He can’t get any more out than that, but his mom—bless his mom—she knows what he means.

.

.

.

After a lengthy back and forth with the San Diego office of Child Protective Services, Shane knows exactly what needs to happen, bureaucratically speaking, in the next few days so that he can take custody of Amelia.

But first, a carseat arrives at his door via Amazon Prime, care of his mom.

“How do moms think of everything?” Shane breathes, sliding a pair of scissors through the tape holding the box closed. “Is your mom like this, too?” he directs at Ryan.

“Oh, absolutely.”

_Stephanie was a mom._

Shane’s throat closes, clinching tight as he shuts down the prickle in the corner of his eyes.

Once they get the box open and pull all the contents, packaging, and plastic out, they both kind of just stand there at Shane’s kitchen table.

“Uhhhhh,” Ryan starts, turning the instructions upside down and back again.

“Uhhhhh,” Shane repeats, just as bamboozled.

There’s a lengthy pause where they both just sort of… try to reboot, but can’t.

They’ve been awake and somewhat hungover since 5am.

And holy shit, they’re gonna install a car seat. For a child. In Ryan’s car.

They are. Shane and Ryan. _Ryan and Shane._ The pair of grown men that Buzzfeed pays to wander through creaky old houses and antagonize the wind into making a sound loud enough to be caught on audio. The same two men who will demolish an absurd amount of popcorn in a shockingly short amount of time. The same men who think it’s acceptable to spend 17 hours straight playing video games.

It feels rude to laugh, now, on the way to pick up his cousin’s newly orphaned baby, but what else is he supposed to do?

_Shit._

If he can’t figure out how to install a car seat, Shane is royally fucked.

Whose idea even was this?

The answer is sobering, and the grin just starts to slip off Shane’s face when Ryan gives a start before reaching to pluck his phone from his back pocket.

“I have an idea.”

.

.

.

“Okay, so once the big one is all strapped in like this,” Hannah shows them, demonstrating and pointing out important positioning for the iphone Ryan has following her every move, “you tighten it—yeah, Shane, you try.” She steps out of frame and Shane wedges himself into the backseat area of Ryan’s car and tries it out for himself. “And then give it a wiggle. Really try to move the base and see if it’s tight enough.”

It barely budges and Hannah crows with enthusiasm.

“And then the seat part clicks in here, and you hear the—” she pauses for the latching noise, “—and she should be all strapped in by that point, and ready to go on an adventure!”

“You did it, big guy!” Ryan says, giving him a wide grin.

Shane nods and takes a deep breath, holding it for a beat too long.

.

.

.

Ryan lets Shane play one of his long Americana playlists the whole ride down to San Diego, where Steph had lived with Amelia, and where they now have to go fetch her from.

The ride back is much quieter because there’s a four month old in the backseat, sleeping like her life hasn’t just taken a drastic and unexpected swerve to the left.

**Author's Note:**

> As I said way above, I'm new to these parts. Please let me know what you thought, and I'll have another chapter sometime soon.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr as justcourbeau.


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